Greenwald: New NYT Editor Has Disturbing History of Being ‘Subservient’ to Gov’t

Making the media rounds to promote his new book, Glenn Greenwald dropped by HuffPost Live today, and one of the issues he addressed was the recent power shift at The New York Times and how, he argued, new executive editor Dean Baquet has displayed a history of journalism that’s been “subservient” to people in power, a contrast he partly drew with Jill Abramson, who was fired from the Times this week. Because for whatever issues Greenwald might have with the Times under her leadership, he had to credit Abramson for being “the best advocate for an adversarial relationship” of all the people who’ve recently held that position.

Abramson, in fact, has been rather openly critical about the lack of transparency in the Obama White House. When Baquet was at the L.A. Times, he was accused of killing a big story on the NSA and AT&T, a story that was eventually published in The New York Times.

Greenwald said Baquet has a “really disturbing history of practicing this form of journalism that is incredibly subservient to the American national security state. And he took a more general shot at the Times, remarking that the paper may “continue to descend downward into this sort of journalism that is very neutered and far too close to the very political factions that it’s supposed to exercise oversight over.”

Watch the video below, via HuffPost Live:

[image via screengrab]

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Follow Josh Feldman on Twitter: @feldmaniac

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